Brad Paisley meditates on his home state of West Virginia on his newly released EP, Son of the Mountains: The First Four Tracks. Two songs, “Son of the Mountains” and “The Medicine Will,” reflect on what he loves about the state and what he worries about: The latter songs addresses the opioid crisis. Paisley debuted videos for the two songs on YouTube on Friday.
On “Son of the Mountains,” which also features Dan Tyminski and Jerry Douglas, Paisley sings about an uncle of his who promised a judge he’d never again get caught running moonshine — so the uncle just got a faster car. “By the time they make it legal, we’re a long way down that road,” he sings as guitars and banjos play around him. “Hell, I don’t care who you marry, what you brew or what you grow.” He beams with pride about being a “son of the mountains” (and a son of a gun for that matter) in the chorus.
“The Medicine Will” sets a more somber tone, as Paisley juxtaposes the opioid crisis with imagery of mining towns making sense of pill-related deaths. “We dug that mine a mile below us, and built up this little town,” he sings, “Oh and we’re still digging holes, but these are six feet down.”
The EP’s other songs, which foreshadow a Son of the Mountains full-length due early next year, are the previously released “Same Here,” which features Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and “So Many Summers.”
In an interview with Variety, Paisley said the release isn’t meant to be a concept album so much as representation about how he views the world. “I look at this world through the eyes of somebody who grew up in that situation, and these are unique people, really unique,” he said. “And you can’t put them in a box and say this is exactly who they are at all times. They’re very free-thinking, really emotionally intelligent and resilient people where I come from up there. And it was fun to go back after all these years and really explore that musically.”
“Son of the Mountain” came first, Paisley said, in a songwriting session with Lee Miller. “The state motto where I’m from is ‘Montanai Semper Liberi,’ which is “Mountaineers are always free,’” he told Variety. “And I think if there’s anything they prize more than anything, it’s being free up there. So I was like, well, how do we say that and say some of the things I want to say in this song?
“That’s when Lee said, ‘Well, you know, my great uncle did time in prison for running moonshine across lines,’ and I said, ‘What?’” Paisley continued. “And he said, ‘Yeah, my family doesn’t talk about it. They’re ashamed.’ And I said, ‘That would be line one of my bio!’”
“The Medicine Will,” another song Paisley wrote with Miller, is his favorite he’s ever written, according to Paisley. “[The song] doesn’t feel like the kind of thing that is a historical account or some sort of documentary,” he said. “The record just feels like it’s a type of blues; it’s a type of protest song.”